"Our fans are pretty good. They don't give away too much. Sometimes people love dropping spoilers, but our fans are good. They tend to do it in such a way that doesn't ruin it for fans who don't want to know."--Phil Keoghan

The best I can do on the wooden backpacks is Kraxe. These days Kraxe refers to baby-carriers, but in the past "kraxentragers" were wandering woodcarvers who sold their supply off their backs. (see here). I don't know who makes them, but the ones the racers used seemed rather flimsy.

The best I can do on the wooden backpacks is Kraxe. These days Kraxe refers to baby-carriers, but in the past "kraxentragers" were wandering woodcarvers who sold their supply off their backs. (see here). I don't know who makes them, but the ones the racers used seemed rather flimsy.

This is the info I found on them earlier in the week. They were simply referred to as a Holzräf (Wooden pack)I'd posted this in the speculation thread instead of here.

I have been trying to find out more about the wooden backpacks they are using here

I haven't been able to find a really close match yet, but it seems that they are a traditional Swiss German Räf defined here as "A frame for carrying objects on one’s back, with which one can balance cumbersome and heavy loads over the centre line of the body, thus making them easier to carry."The picture on this page here has been removed, but I think the comment is referring to the same piece of apparatus "The wooden backpack is also used for carrying the large cheeses down into the valley."

There was a new promo after CSI and the first few frames are new. They are walking (climbing) up a snow covered mT. and then on a snowmoble. Wish I could tranfer over to the computer but I can't Hope you can Puddin. Thanks

Oh its the one they have been playing over and over Uncle Bill, I think the snow mobiles are season 6/ Iceland and the mountain climbing either season 4 or 5 I think? but its a montage of past season/clips thats all.

"Our fans are pretty good. They don't give away too much. Sometimes people love dropping spoilers, but our fans are good. They tend to do it in such a way that doesn't ruin it for fans who don't want to know."--Phil Keoghan

Did the teams split up? Nijjy saw teams on the western run (Domodossola>Spiez>Interlaken), and Boingo spotted the Munoz bros. on the eastern run (Bellinzona>Lucerne>Interlaken). System map here (430kb pdf).

Is it possible to get any sort of time indication from the photo of the Munoz bros? According to the eye witness on the other train it was around midday when the others got on their train in Domodossola

Did a quick check of the license plate on the white Mercedes the blogger photographed as a TAR car in Salzburg (Austria). It appears to be a German license plate. Note the font, the Euro blue, the similar graphics consistent with a German plate. So if it's not Swiss, and not Austrian, did they drive it all the way from Germany? How does this figure into the flight schedules? Or did they ship these cars in from Germany just for the product promotion. So many questions....

"Our fans are pretty good. They don't give away too much. Sometimes people love dropping spoilers, but our fans are good. They tend to do it in such a way that doesn't ruin it for fans who don't want to know."--Phil Keoghan

The car number plate originates in Stuttgart. I think the most likely scenario is that they trained/flew to Munich and picked the cars up from there but from memory it's only a couple of hours drive from Stuttgart to Munich on the Autobahn

That car was registered in Stuttgart, which is where the Mercedes factory is located. So that ties in with them being a sponsor product. It is quite common to put a bunch of cars on a truck and transport them from A to B in Europe. I would assume they will just pick the cars up and take them back to Stuttgart again on a truck when they are finished - it's only about 125 miles from Munich - so only an hour or two drive on the autobahn

Do you think they could have possibly had the cars delivered to Switzerland and had them drive to Bavaria from there? If I was a field producer, I would not want to send racers into Munich unnecessarily, far too many tourists...

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"Our fans are pretty good. They don't give away too much. Sometimes people love dropping spoilers, but our fans are good. They tend to do it in such a way that doesn't ruin it for fans who don't want to know."--Phil Keoghan

Do you think they could have possibly had the cars delivered to Switzerland and had them drive to Bavaria from there? If I was a field producer, I would not want to send racers into Munich unnecessarily, far too many tourists...

Anything is possible. It would all come down to how direct the route from Stuttgart to Interlaken is for a truck transporter (ie main highways as opposed to windy alpine roads). I'll go look at a map now.*Because in Germany you have to reregister your car if you move to a new district, so those cars had to originate in Stuttgart. Another alternative to Munich would be taking the train to Zurich and self driving from there. At airports the racers are quite obvious, as there is a lot of hanging around and there are a large number of travellers (all blogging and with camera handy), but in past races, other forms of public transport such as trains and buses have had less reliable race sightings, and so a Munich train station sighting could still have easily escaped our attention.

*ETA according to Google it is nearly 4 hrs drive from Stuttgart to Interlaken, but just over 2 hrs to either Munich or Zurich, so either option would be feasible.

I think that Mercedes dropped the cars off in Interlaken and picked them up in Salzburg. That means the teams drove from Interlaken to Schloss Hellbrunn. Thats probably why we didnt find any reports of people seeing them in airports or train stations between Interlaken and Salzburg. More stealth stuff from BVM as apskip calls it.

I concur with Dr.Rox. The logical place to pick up a vehicle is Interlaken. We have already offered the time for the drive to Salzburg of 5 hours 40 minutes but it would be slightly less to Berchtesgaden or elsewhere in Bavaria (the Germany side of the border).